Image is sourced from this People's Dispatch article, depicting communists attending the 2023 funeral of Communist Party President Guillermo Teillier, who was tortured for years under Pinochet's regime and helped rebuild the Communist Party while under a fascist dictatorship.
We had the Six Day War in 1967, we had the Nineteen Day War (Yom Kippur) in 1973, and now we've had the Twelve Day War. I wonder how many more very short wars will plague the region until Palestine is freed?
However, moving on from Western Asia from a little while, we have some interesting news from Chile - the former labor minister and communist, Jeannette Jara, has won the primary election for the left-wing bloc in a landslide (~60% of the vote), as the current President, Gabriel Boric, is term-limited. Her achievements include a minimum wage increase and a reduction of the work week to 40 hours.
In November, Jara will face down the contenders from other parties, including José Antonio Kast, who is analogous to Brazil's Bolsonaro. Unfortunately, Jara is now the lead figure of a party that has been taking quite a few Ls under Boric's leadership. Ostensibly a Democratic Socialist, he ruled as - you guessed it - a neoliberal, bending the knee to the US and EU. He not only failed to overthrow the Pinochet-era constitution, he actually allowed the right-wing to turn the proposed new constitution into something worse, and had to settle for campaigning against the new one and keeping the old one. And he had very little solidarity with other left-leaning leaders on the continent, like Maduro, Lula, Petro, or Castillo.
With this in mind, I cannot help but look at Argentina's very recent history and feel a little dread - but if anybody can save Chile at this point, it can only be a communist.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last night Russia launched a large scale attack on Ukraine, with a specific focus on airbases and airports in Kyiv oblast.
Initial numbers are reported to be:
Update with Ukrainian numbers:
Main targets were Vasylkiv Airbase and Zhuliany International Airport. Why this large scale attack on airbases and airports? I'd guess that the capabilities of the Ukrainian Air Force are being revived, as they receive more F-16AM fighter jets. As more of the 80+ F-16s arrive, more of Ukraine's MiG-29s and Su-27s can be freed up from defensive duties to offensive ones, and the F-16s can carry out offensive missions themselves. There has been more and more footage of the Ukrainian Air Force carrying out strike missions, and Ukrainian strike packages are getting more sophisticated, with more aircraft available to provide cover for the aircraft carrying out strikes. There have also been some costly Russian losses in radars for the S-400 air defence system, with the Pantsir point defence system again failing to shoot down one way attack drones approaching the S-400 radars, and some more SBU attacks on Russian airfields with FPV drones, Russian milblogger FighterBomber confirmed the damage to multiple Su-34s. The capabilities of the Ukrainian Air Force are becoming more of an issue for Russia, a Russian Su-35 was even shot down a few weeks ago. Ukraine has also now launched multiple Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG stealth cruise missile attacks over the past few days, the first in months, which have hit targets in Russia itself. The Ukrainian Air Force also shot down double the amount of aerial targets in June vs May, over 600 vs 300, mostly one way attack drones and cruise missiles. The focus here is not in the numbers (likely inaccurate), but the ratio of June vs May.
With this in mind, it's quite obvious why Russia is now attacking forward air bases and airports in Kyiv. The capabilities of the Ukrainian Air Force are becoming more of a concern, strike now before it becomes a more serious issue.
they really gotta figure out someway of better anti-drone air defense, i know you mentioned the US may have come up with a relatively cheap effective way of defending against drones, do you think russia could pull off something similar?
FSB getting dunked on so hard by the SBU it seems to me rn, what are they doing man
That, APKWS, is more for the one way attack drones like Shaheds and Gerans, not the quadcopter FPV drones that Ukraine is using for these strikes against radar installations in Crimea. This is because Pantsir is not a good point defence system that can't do it's job properly and protect the S-400. For now Russia could use more Tor systems for this, but long term they need to replace Pantsir with a better system, or do a big upgrade. But yes, Russia does definitely need a cheap more effective way of defending against one way attack drones, an APKWS equivalent. Ugroza rockets were supposed to be exactly this, a kit to convert unguided rockets to laser guided missiles, but like a lot of capabilities Russia was supposed to have, it seems to have disappeared with time. They should resume development.